How These Young Conservative YouTube Stars Are Making Bank By Embracing Trump and Bashing Feminism

Hunter Avallone, pictured here, has built a following on YouTube by mocking feminists and the "social-justice" left.

YouTube

Hunter Avallone, a 20-year-old video school dropout, has 276,000 YouTube subscribers, 32,000 followers on Instagram, a clothing line and – crucial to the credibility of any burgeoning conservative icon – a swell of haters.

“I love being controversial. I literally get off on pissing people off, as long as I’m pissing them off – I feel – for the right reasons,” he says during an interview a few hours before launching his own online store, featuring T-shirts with phrases like “Islam is the greatest cancer on this entire planet” and “Welcome To Retardville.”

Avallone, 20, is part of a new wave of political raconteur, validated and inspired in the wake of President Donald Trump’s victory, and bred from the same anti-liberal outrage as Milo Yiannopoulos, his self-proclaimed “No. 1 inspiration.” Like Avallone, these firebrands are fluent in the terminology of “social justice warriors” and practitioners of the YouTuber’s political weapon of choice: the video takedown.

Andy Warski, 29, whose videos and live podcasts regularly target mainstream feminism, has said there is an audience eager to see the movement get mocked.

“These feminists are so ridiculous that the material writes itself,” he says. “You can just show a clip of them and it’s funny already.”

Avallone, whose description on his YouTube page reads, “I’m The Guy You Love To Hate,” first recognized the financial benefit to cultivating outrage when he released the video, “The Truth About Transgenders,” on Feb. 12, 2016, which almost immediately garnered fiery responses from trans advocates online. “Stop commending transgenders,” he says at one point in the video. “It’s a mental illness, not heroism.” A typical reply from the advocacy news site Pride.com minced no words: “Avallone, you are a bigot.”

Later that month, Avallone’s boss at a clothing retailer asked him to take any reference to his employment out of his Facebook page due to the backlash the store was receiving.

“That’s when I realized I love being controversial, I love stirring the pot,” he says. “I began to love the offensive humor more and more.” His videos have waded more aggressively into social issues ever since. “Why I Hate ‘Fat Acceptance,’” posted on July 29, 2016, notched over 1.1 million views – Avallone’s highest total then or since. He added over 34,000 subscribers over the next five days, according to the analytics tracking site, Social Blade.

For provocateurs like Avallone, the business of sharp-edged political humor comes with trade-offs – while the political mainstream now incorporates ideas once relegated to the conservative fringe, national advertisers have not been so accommodating.

This spring brought on what YouTube users called an “adpocalypse.” In response to a boycott from advertisers over having their ads juxtaposed with videos of questionable material, YouTube introduced policies limiting ad placement on videos featuring “sensitive social issues” and profanity, among other categories.

With advertisers already reluctant to put their money with YouTube, and new content policies restricting the ad revenue controversial content would be receiving anyway, users saw their vlogging windfalls dry up.

Top users across the site, including Philip DeFranco and Felix “PewDiePie” Kjellberg, reported sharp declines in their revenue at the start of the boycott. (PewDiePie, whose channel has over 55 million subscribers, reportedly provided the impetus for the boycott, once advertisers noticed recurring anti-Semitic imagery in his videos).

DeFranco said his revenue dropped by 80%, before stabilizing by mid-April. Right-wing commentary, already a pesky enterprise for YouTube’s image-conscious clients, had never been more unattractive for advertisers. How could these accounts survive, let alone thrive, as they’re claiming?

Warski, 29, provides an interesting case study. After first posting to YouTube in October 2009, he stuck to mainly nonpolitical sketch comedy and commentary, only occasionally veering into the political sphere. In July 2016, he put up a doozy entitled “Black Lives Matter is Utter Shit.” Over the next six months, his subscriber base nearly tripled.

Since his switch to politics, Warski, who is from Toronto and makes videos with his childhood buddy, Chris, has rolled out a line of merchandise and signed with Viral Nation, a “social influencer talent agency” that also counts Avallone among its clients.

Once Warski’s revenue from advertising plummeted in the aftermath of the boycott, he began soliciting money directly from viewers, using a platform called “Super Chat” within YouTube that allows viewers to send money to content creators during the airing of live videos, almost like a telethon. According to revenue estimates provided to FORBES, the money Warski made from Super Chat dwarfed by an 8-to-1 margin the number he was estimated to make from AdSense, the platform YouTube uses as a subsidiary of Google.

“If advertisers will not pay us, then the people will pay us,” he said.

As Yiannopoulos has proven to great success: "Takedown” videos mocking liberals generally spark their own takedowns from the left and ensuing press coverage. The resulting outrage cycle only rewards their brand: like-minded viewers subscribe for more, while hate-watchers stay for the perverse thrill.

While the median age of CNN, MSNBC and Fox News viewers is over 68, YouTubers in Avallone and Warski’s cohort regularly reach millions of Millennials.

Over 78% of Avallone’s viewers are under 34, according to demographic reports he receives from YouTube that were provided to FORBES.

James Allsup, 21, an outspoken Trump supporter whose videos have garnered over 14 million views in the past year, said 77% of his audience is under 34.